


not like going, but like going back

by soitgoes



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Abduction, Dark, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Dubious Consent, Explicit Sexual Content, Extremely Dubious Consent, F/M, Kidnapping, Pseudo-Incest, Smut, Stockholm Syndrome
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-28
Updated: 2019-07-28
Packaged: 2020-07-23 19:37:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,209
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20013700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soitgoes/pseuds/soitgoes
Summary: He convinces himself that this is the only way to keep both the world and her safe.





	not like going, but like going back

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I asked him then: "What do you want?"
> 
> He said, "To be in hell with you."
> 
> \-- Anna Akhmatova, Final Meeting: Selected Poetry

It’s about half past four, when Five pulls up to what looks like, for all intents and purposes, an abandoned warehouse. The large brick structure is a hulking figure looming against the already dim autumn sky. High above, a full moon sits in the sky like a giant eye and Five avoids meeting it's bright gaze. A simple click of the remote clipped to the sun visor above his head and the large, metal door creaks upwards to reveal an empty but tidy interior. He parks neatly in the center of the vast space and another click of the remote sends the garage door sliding back down plunging him into near pitch darkness.

It took him longer than he had anticipated to get back home but still Five allows himself to sit for a moment in the near-dark of the warehouse. He glances up at the rear view mirror and is met by a dark, slick surface. He cannot make out his own face in the reflection. It's just as well. It was a lifetime ago when he last felt any real connection to the face he sees in the mirror. He always expects to see someone else, a thirteen year old boy maybe or an old man, face lined and eyes hollowed out by decades spent in an apocalyptic desert wasteland and decades more spent bloodying his hands as a quantum hitman. It has been a long time since his body has felt like a body and not a cosmic joke.

But he can’t let himself take too long of a reprieve. Vanya will be waiting on him and after a few more indulgent moments in the dark, Five reaches for the door handle and pushes it open. The cabin light flicks on and instantly, his own face appears in the rear view mirror disturbingly unfamiliar. Certainly there are things he recognizes, the dark hair, the bright eyes, and square jaw. He must seem to anyone else, a perfectly average young man in his twenties. Nobody would guess about his bloody hands and bloodier failures. Nobody would guess what he's buried twenty feet beneath his feet.

The warehouse is almost completely dark now except for the car light and another light ahead in side of an open-face elevator. Five checks his watch, he’s over an hour late. Vanya will be in a tizzy. She likes to think she’s good at hiding her discontent but she wears it plainly on her face. He can picture her waiting up for him, cheeks flushed, mouth in a tight little pout. The thought sets him to work collecting the groceries from the back seat of the car. All the bags gathered, he heads towards the elevator. With practiced ease, he types a fifteen-digit security code into a number pad and with a soft click the elevator gate unlocks. Hands still full, he pulls the gate open and closes it again. There’s only two buttons. They had both been bright red at one point but the lower one is worn down to a dull, bare silver. This is the one he selects and as he does so the whole mechanism creaks to life. 

Then, he descends.

The first time the world ended, Five wasn’t there. The second time and every time after, he is. And this is what he learns. The apocalypse always happens and Vanya is always the cause. He had tried to help her, to fix her. Five burned up so many timelines trying to find a way to safe both the world and her but no matter how hard he tried something or someone would always set her off. There was only one choice. He had to take Vanya out of the equation. 

The elevator runs slowly, creaking all the while as it passes the first floor which is more of a room than a full floor. It’s mostly filled with monitoring equipment. The wall on his left is covered completely in screens, each one corresponding to a camera in the rooms below. Tapes, wires, other recording devices crowd the space. It’s an impressive set up and had cost him a pretty penny but they sit up there neglected and unused. All of the monitors are dead, no red recording lights blinking, and a thick layer of dust has settled on everything in the room including his unkempt twin-sized bed pushed against the far corner of the room.

The gloomy sight of his room passes away and it is replaced with the sight of the next floor which opens from the elevator into a short hallway that is just as dim as it is outside the warehouse. When designing the place, Five had read that living underground can disrupt a person’s circadian cycles. So he had installed a mechanism that controls the light levels in the hallways as well as the apartments to simulate time passing. Five is particularly proud of that little detail. 

At the end of the short hallway is a door with a keypad to the right of it. Before typing in his code, Five knocks softly, a way of letting Vanya know that he's back. Usually when he’s late, Vanya would be crowding the door but there’s no sound of footfalls, no slight creak from her meager weight upon the door. Five quickly types his fifteen-digit code and door swings open to an empty room. As soon as he steps inside, the door closes automatically behind him, an audible click as it locks followed by a soft beep

It had been upsettingly easy to take her. Vanya was just nineteen when she left home with little more than the clothes on her back and her violin. No one tries to stop her. In fact, no one even seems to notice. Except for him of course. By then it’s just Vanya and Luther staying at the Academy with the occasional appearance from Klaus. Luther is still busy trying to win Reginald’s affection by shucking off his own free will like a corn husk and when Klaus isn’t blitzed out of his mind, he’s sleeping off the crash. And Vanya, despite her best efforts to be as miniscule as possible, can no longer fit into this broken tapestry. So she leaves and he could have taken her then. She’s so small, so weak and vulnerable but it seems a great injustice to squash her independence so soon after she’s found it. 

A few months in and out of shelters and a waitressing gig or two later, Vanya manages to scrounge up enough cash to rent out a crap studio. Five is proud of her. In her book, Vanya had glossed over this part of her life as though it meant nothing to her but Five was moved. As he stands alone in that empty room, he’s reminded of the strange swell of pride he had felt watching her scrape together a life. She had had a real life, independent of their domineering father, out of the shadow cast by their siblings. Even if only for a little while.

“Vanya?” he calls out into the clearly empty room. 

It’s tiny, cramped, and without much architectural logic. A typical shitty studio. There’s just enough space to fit a single mattress up against the far left corner beneath a large window and a couch that is kept pressed up against the opposite wall. It’s not a room that Five would have designed himself and in fact it is the only one in the building that he didn’t have a hand in arranging. It’s a near perfect recreation of the first apartment Vanya manages to rent after she leaves the Academy. The same apartment he broke into. The apartment he drugged her in and carried her limp body back to his car. 

He walks over to the window and pulls back the curtain to reveal a cityscape. It’s the view of the city at night from her window at least that’s what it might be mistaken for at first glance. After some inspection, it becomes clear that is paint on glass. Hyper-realistic and expertly rendered but it’s just paint in the end. It seemed a waste that Vanya rarely spent any time in this room anymore. He had hoped that a familiar setting might make her feel better, help her adjust but it only reminds her of the life he stole from her. The only time Vanya comes here now is to wait for him to get back. Five had recreated this room in such painstaking detail down to the tacky wallpaper and the cracked plaster ceiling but there was one significant difference, a door located on the far right wall besides the couch. It leads into the rest of the apartments and always remains unlocked. Five walks over to it and knocks. Again, nothing. 

There’s no logic that can explain why something as harmless as silence in an empty room fills him with such dread. Five knows this trap is airtight. He designed it himself but the thought of Vanya being gone, the thought of being alone in here makes him feel ill. He rushes into the next room intent on finding her. 

Back when he had first brought her here, Five had been determined to keep the lines drawn clearly between them. This required him to follow a set of rules. He only spoke to her when needed and only ever through the intercoms he had installed in every room. For months, he had only stepped foot on her floor to deliver her provisions and anything reasonable she requested of him. And he makes her wear a blindfold whenever he has to interact with her in person. He tells himself that it’s for the best that she doesn’t know. He couldn’t be her brother anymore, couldn’t be anything to her but her jailer. It’s for the best, for them both, to remember their place.

Five manages to hold out for just under a year. In the end, it’s her fondness that breaks him. Her sheer need to give and receive affection, even if it’s with the monster that kidnapped and imprisoned her for months. Of course, at first, there’s tears and bargaining but once it becomes apparent that she isn’t getting out, she takes it in stride. At the beginning, she’s cautious but soon enough she’s cordial and before long, Vanya treats him not just with kindness but with _warmth_. And with the voracity and restraint of a starving man to a buffet, Five pounces and devours all that she offers. 

Five moves into the next room over, the kitchen. Nothing. He abandons the groceries there and moves to the living room. Then the library, the bedroom, he finds nothing and Five begins to panic. It's only then notices the soft, undulating hum of a washing machine running, the laundry room. He rushes back to the library where the door that opens to laundry room.

Things between them get messy, quickly. He no longer knows where to draw the line between them and he slips further and further down that slippery slope. She does too. Five doesn’t realize just how far they’ve strayed until it’s far too late to turn back.

At one point, she even asks him, “do you love me?”

He’s reading in the living room and she’s seated on the carpet, her back pressed up against his chair between his legs. Her question strikes him like a high-pitched chime and Five is left speechless for a few moments before he replies.

“Why would you ask me that?” he asks.

She doesn't even look up when she murmurs, matter-of-factly, "because I love you.”

He feels almost angry when she says that, frantic even.

“No you don’t," he tells her. "Who do you think I am to you, Vanya?”

“You’re...you’re my friend,” she says but doesn’t sound sure.

“You think this is what friends do? Kidnap you, lock you away, make you wear a blindfold?"

Vanya doesn’t answer and Five is suddenly overcome by the urge to shake her as he tells her, "I’m not your friend, Vanya. I’m your captor.”

And yet, there she is, sitting between his legs as she works on her crochet. It’s what they would call evening and they’ve had dinner together as Vanya tells him about her day. He knows what she’s done all day. He’s watched her from the monitors but Vanya enjoys telling him and so he lets her. They’ve stopped being just captor and captive a while ago. Five stares down at her. At this point, her hands have stilled and her head is bent low. He can't see her face, just the elastic band of her blindfold curved around the back of her head.

“Can’t you be both?” she says as she turns her face to him.

She can't see him, her eyes are covered and yet he feels pinned as if she had set upon him a piercing gaze. He can only answer with silence but that doesn't seem to faze her. Vanya puts her tangle of yarn down on the coffee table and crawls into his lap. Wordlessly, she curls herself around him. Her head fits perfectly on his shoulder. Her warm breath spreads over his skin and leaves him feeling so desperate and wretched. But he doesn't push her away. He can't. All he can do is wrap his arms around her and pull her closer. He crushes her to him with such force that it must have hurt, she probably couldn’t breathe but Vanya shows no signs of discomfort. She doesn't even flinch.

At the time, Five had agonized over what she had said. Her question had brought into stark relief how far he had strayed. It had left him scrambling, struggling to regain some semblance of the confines he had set for them. But eventually, he comes to terms with the fact that he’s never been a very good man. He’s ruined both their lives, broken every rule, every taboo. They are both spoiled, no longer fit for the outside world. And it doesn’t matter. If he is honest with himself, Five knows he stopped being suitable for any kind of normal life a long time ago. So why deny himself whatever happiness he manages to wring from what’s left over. The hard truth of the matter is, he likes having her all to himself. He likes keeping her. 

The hum of the washer is louder in the library but still subtle. He had missed it when he stopped in here before. At the back of the room, is the door to the laundry room. It’s the only door in her apartments that has a lock and he'd just given her the key a few days ago and permission to use it freely. It's just laundry but it's something new and Vanya is fixated. She goes in there all the time now, sometimes for hours. And sure enough, he opens the door to find Vanya laid out on the floor before the running washer.

The sight of her is such a relief, Five nearly loses his composure. He rushes into the room to kneel down beside her. She’s in nothing but one of his shirts and her face is uncovered. Vanya hates sleeping with the blindfold on. It rests beside her, discarded. He reaches out to run his knuckles down the side of her face. The subtle contact causes her to stir. Beneath her eyelids, Vanya’s eyes flicker from side to side. Her eyes don’t open but there’s a subtle shift in her expression that tells him she’s awake.

“You’re back,” she murmurs softly and leans into his touch.

He hums in response and she smiles. Her eyes are still closed. They crinkle at the corners with her smile and a few stray strands have fallen into her face.

“Put on your blindfold,” he tells her gently, brushing a few strands from her face. 

Her sleepy smile falters but only very slightly, the tiniest twitch of the corners of her mouth. She recovers instantly but he notices even as she nods and reaches over for the blindfold at her side. There had been a time when she had resisted the blindfold but when faced with the choice of the blindfold or being without him, Vanya had chosen him. 

It's a slow kind of murder he's committing. Five has come to terms with that. Every day that passes, he digs the grave a little deeper but this is the story of his life, a deep grave that only gets deeper. The man he is now is wretched and irredeemable. And perhaps it only because of vanity that he wants this but he wants Number Five, the boy she once called her sole confidant, to remain that thirteen year old boy in her memory. He has ruined himself and her with things he’s done. He'd like something good of him to remain, even if it's only in her memory. 

“Sorry I was so late,” he says, watching her adjust the fabric over her eyes. “I ran into traffic. Are you hungry?”

Eyes sufficiently covered, she shakes her head, "just sleepy."

Vanya raises her hand and despite her blindness finds his cheek. Her hand scrapes over his stubble, up the side of his face. Then she reaches up and takes his earlobe between her thumb and forefinger. She rubs thumb softly over the sensitive skin, a strangely intimate act. If he leaves her, Five has no doubt that she’ll sleep here all night, lazy thing. 

“Let’s get you to bed.”

Vanya nods in response, lifting her arms wanting him to carry her. Vanya is so prone to lethargy these days but he complies. She’s easy enough to lift. He slips his hands under her armpits and hoists her up. Immediately, Vanya wraps herself around him, arms hanging loosely around his neck and dangling down his back. He grips her thighs and secures them around his waist. Vanya lays her head on his shoulder and murmurs something against his skin. He can’t hear her, only feels the warmth of her breath upon his neck. Even as he leans his cheek against hers, straining to hear, he cannot make out the words. Once they get to the bedroom, it takes some effort to pry her from his body. 

"Vanya," he says as he tries to coax her arms to loosen their hold.

Vanya responds with a sleepy, discontent grumble and she only tightens her grip. So, for a few extra moments, he just holds her. He truly doesn’t mind carrying her. Vanya’s always been a small thing and she is even smaller compared to his tall frame. Besides, he likes the weight of her against him, her warmth wrapped around him. It’s comforting and he’s long since stopped denying himself the comfort of her body. But the moment has to pass and he eventually gets her let go and she climbs willingly into bed.

He's about to leave when she calls out to him, "wait."

Her voice is clear, all the sleep gone from it. Five walks back to the bedside.

"Did you need something?"

Vanya doesn't answer him. She takes his hand in hers, lacing their fingers together. Then, she slowly folds her legs up, bending them at the knee. With them the edge of the shirt slides back over thighs falling back onto her stomach. She's not wearing any panties. Vanya rarely does anymore. Captivity has made her shameless in more ways than one. She sways her knees, parting them ever do slightly. She bites her lip and he knows what she wants. 

Five separates their interlaced fingers and slides his newly-free hand up under the hem of her shirt. He rubs slow, firm circles over her stomach. Each pass of her hand over her skin finds his hand trailing lower and lower until his fingers brush the coarse, dark tuft crawling up from between her thighs. He slides his hand over the sweet curve of her mound to cup her sex. Shameless creature that she is, Vanya pushes up against his hand. She squirms, trying to get him to touch her where she needs him most. When she starts to whine, Five finally complies and dips a finger into her and her thighs fall wide open.

She’s already so wet and takes two fingers easily. Her hips buck up as she gasps. The tiniest smile hides at the corners of her open mouth. He could take her right then but Five wants to play with her for a little while longer. With his free hand he pushes her shirt up to her chin. Her nipples are already tight, ready to be attended to but he doesn’t touch them. He's saving that for later. Five instead leans down and places wet, open-mouthed kisses along her sides, one for each rib. She squirms, ticklish. 

A few minutes of that and Vanya is a trembling, mewling mess, grinding her hips against his hand, asking for more, always more. With his thumb, he finds her clit and rubs tight little circles around it. Vanya keens, her back arching up. He feels her cunt contract around his fingers. She's close. Her breathing is hard, irregular and just before she can cum he pulls his fingers roughly from her. She lets loose a strangled, frustrated cry at being denied her orgasm. Five grins wickedly and pops his fingers into his mouth and sucks them clean.

“Are you ready?” he asks but he needs no answer.

He knows she’s ready but Vanya is happy to let him know in her own way. She slides her hand up his thigh and finds his erection. Her soft palm allows for the slightest, sweetest friction as she strokes him slowly.Not able to deny himself or her any longer, Five stands and makes quick work of his pants. He climbs onto the bed and positions himself between her thighs. He takes his cock in his hand, gives himself a couple strokes and then presses his swollen head against her cunt. Her breathing is still uneven but she smiles up at him in anticipation, her bottom lip caught between her teeth. Five leans forward presses a soft kiss to her mouth. She responds in earnest, devouring, she groans into his mouth. Such a sweet sound that immediately turns into a strangled gasp as he pushes into her.

“Fuck, you feel so good,” he mutters against her mouth.

He's had her so many times now in so many ways but still the sensation of her warm, wet cunt around his cock is overwhelming. They stay like that for a few seconds, just enjoying the feeling of being connected in the most sordid way but it doesn’t last long. It isn't enough. She rolls her hips upward and the delicious friction ignites the need for more. He pulls back and pumps into her eliciting another strangled, delicious gasp. Her little tits bounce with the force of it. He leans forward to run his tongue, wide and flat, over her left nipple. She gasps at the sudden contact. When he takes the nipple into his mouth and sucks, the tip of his tongue lapping lightly at the tight little nub.

"Oh," she gasps. "Oh fuck."

He releases it with a wet pop, grinning at her dirty mouth. Five sets a brutal pace but she meets him thrust for thrust. She's so tight, slick and hot. He's still lapping at her left nipple when he takes the right one and rolls it between his fingers. She grunts and cunt tightens up. She’s so close now. Five can feel his orgasm building, his strokes becoming quicker, less controlled. Then, he pinches her right nipple between his fingers, softly at first. She spasms but she needs more. Still keeping pace, he takes her other nipple into his mouth again grinding his teeth over it. He slips his hand down between them and presses two fingers up against the firm bud of her clit and she screeches. Her back arches, pressing her hips against his trying to get him deeper inside her. Her hands flail at him, trying to pull him closer. 

In her passion, she accidentally knocks her blindfold askew. Not much but just enough to expose her left eye. She has it squeezed shut still riding out her orgasm. Wildly, he wishes she’d open it and see him. He wants her to know its him, wants to hear her says his name as she cums on his cock.

It's strange, she has no idea who he is but he knows her better than he ever did before. There is no doubt in his mind that he had loved her all those lifetimes ago when they were just kids. Simply and childishly, Five had loved Vanya. But their paths diverged, his jumping the track and going where she never could have followed. Even when they reconvene, he and Vanya are always out of sync. He's met her now at so many points in her life, she is both different the same but one thing stays constant, she slips through his fingers. He's never been able to hang on to her, until now because this Vanya is his and his alone and he _knows_ her.

She likes blueberries but only when they’re in season. She likes having her tits played with when he’s inside her. She can smell the sunshine on him after he’s been out in the sun and can sit, breathing him in, until she’s taken in all the warmth that’s on him. When he goes out in the summer, he stands in the sun for a moment longer than he needs to. When it snows, he’ll bring her handfuls of it still soft and airy. And though he knows she longs for the sun, wants for freedom, Vanya never complains, never gives him grief that all he ever gives her are cheap imitations.

It’s a half life he’s doomed her to but he lives a half life too. He never goes to see the family he was so desperate to save. He only goes out when he needs to, gives up the world he had sacrificed everything to save. He tries to convince himself this is penitence. It's his way of making it up to her and not him hiding his face for what he's done, keeps doing.

Vanya rocks her hips through her orgasm until he reaches his own climax. He groans and finishes inside her. It is bliss, perfect bliss and he wishes they could stay like this forever. But eventually the haze of pleasure passes and he slides his limp cock out of her lovely warmth. He leans back to sit on his heels and observe his handiwork. Vanya is a dream, her body flushed and writhing as she comes down from her orgasm. She whines a little, pushes her hips up. Her cunt is bright and glistening and he can feel himself hardening again. 

He wonders idly if she knows the hold she has over him, he doesn’t know anymore who is the captor and who is the captive. Her little clit is a deep pink and engorged, peeking out from its hood. Five puts his middle and forefingers into his mouth, coating them thickly in saliva before removing them and pressing the tips of his fingers against her clit. Vanya jumps back, whimpering and Five pulls his fingers away.

“Too sensitive?” he asks, glancing up at her face.

She nods and asks, chewing her bottom lip, “can I hold you?”

Vanya raises her arms, opens them hesitantly as if she’s nervous that he’ll deny her. But there’s no need for her to be, there’s little he’d deny her at this point and Five is more than happy to partake of the comfort of her body. He leans forward, crawls up her body to lay his head to her chest. She brings her arms around him, enveloping him in her heat. Her skin is tacky with half-dried sweat but it isn’t uncomfortable. Instead, it feels as if he’s melting into her and she into him. The sound of her heart beating keeps in time with his own.

“I missed you,” she says whispers into his hair.

“Earlier today?" he mumbles into her skin. "I was only gone for a few hours.”

She shakes her head and he turns his face up to look at her.

“It doesn’t matter," she says, peppering kisses across his forehead. “I always miss you when you’re not here.”

Her words both horrify and elate him. She starts to hum and Five closes his eyes, allows himself to pretend that they are not who they are, different faces and different lives. With his face pressed to her skin, her fingers idly playing with his hair, Five rebuilds their lives. They are new people, just young lovers, basking in the afterglow. There’s no apocalypse, no gilded cage, no blindfold. It is just the two of them and they are in love. 

“I read once,” she murmurs. “Sometimes people who have to live for long periods in the dark will go blind.”

His eyes snap open and he looks up to find her head turned slightly to the side. Her blindfold is still slightly askew and her exposed eye is still closed. His fantasy of young love dies at the sight. He's reminded again of their roles. There’s no amount of fucking and sweet words that can change the fact that she is a captive and he is her captor. He reaches up and readjusts the errant blindfold to cover both eyes once again.

“Wouldn’t that be nice? If I went blind? Then we wouldn’t need the blindfold and you could stay all the time.”

He leans up to place a kiss at the corner of her mouth and ignores the way his stomach drops. It’s too late to be sorry or to feel bad. He’s lived his life too many times over to believe that there is any justice to the universe. There is no cosmic right and there is no absolute wrong. No one will hold him accountable for this slow murder he is committing. He has only himself for judge and jury. In any case, he couldn’t stop now even if he wanted to.

Five knows that one day the blindfold will have to come off and she will see his face. She will see the red and black mark on his arm and know who he is and what he's done to her. One day. But not this day. He adjusts their positions so he can hold her from behind. Vanya pulls his arms tighter around her.

"Will you stay tonight?"

She always asks even though he hasn't slept anywhere else for months now. 

"Go to sleep, Vanya."

He waits until her breathing evens out, her limbs going completely slack. Then, he slips a finger under the elastic band wrapped around the back of her head and gently removes the blindfold. Vanya sleeps on, undisturbed. He crumples the blindfold in his hand and waits for sleep to take him under. If she goes blind, then Five wishes he would too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I.....I honestly can't explain myself so why try. I am gross. Sorry.
> 
> if you've managed to make it this far....you've got a strong stomach but also please leave a comment. even if its only to say, "I've alerted the authorities to your presence. you'll finally pay for you crimes!!!" or "boooo. your fic is bad and you should feel bad!!!!"
> 
> comments keep me alive. thank you <3
> 
> Also...probably a lot of errors and missing shit. My bad. This is part one of a two shot. Next one is from Vanya's perspective.


End file.
